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Sunday, 20 January 2013

Thanks be to Thoth - Joan Lennon

I have a small baboon statue sitting by my computer. He represents one of the manifestations of the Egyptian god Thoth, who invented the alphabet, and writing, and therefore made possible my working life. (That would be the Egyptian alphabet, of course, but near enough.) When the gods felt the need of a scribe, he was the one they turned to. He is, as well, a kind of pagan patron saint of anyone who makes their way in the world with quill and papyrus or their equivalents. I pat his head on such a regular basis that it has gone ever so slightly shiny. He is remarkably reluctant to be photographed, but this is how he looks in the British Museum (above) and the Louvre (below).

And, emboldened by Miriam Halahmy's New Year's Resolution, I include a poem about him and me and muse blues ...

Thank you, Sue, Baboon-Lynda, Mavis, Katherine and Jenny! And isn't it boggling, the way Thoth is sometimes a baboon and sometimes an ibis-headed human, as he is on Jenny's post - those Egyptians had flexible imaginations!